We are excited to announce that Seattle-based writer, artist, and activist Reagan Jackson will be delivering the keynote address at the 2018 NW Media Summit: Access the Future.

Reagan Jackson is a writer, artist, activist, international educator and award-winning journalist. She is currently the Program Manager for Young Women Empowered and spends her days working with an intergeneration community of women and non-binary folk to support youth ages 13-18 to find their voice and explore their passions. In her spare time she recently launched a podcast called The Deep End with Seattle Civic Poet Anastacia Renee for the purpose of exploring what people of color are doing to find thriving and freedom in their daily lives. She has been a regular contributor to The Seattle Globalist since 2013. You can also find her byline on the South Seattle Emerald, Her self-published works include two children’s books (Coco LaSwish: A Fish from a Different Rainbow and Coco LaSwish: When Rainbows Go Blue) and three collections of poetry (God, Hair, Love, and America, Love and Guatemala, and Summoning Unicorns).

We are pleased to offer three tracks of programming this year with the 2018 NW Media Summit. Attendees can pick and choose from Leadership Development (LD), Production and Technology (PT), and Communities and Youth (CY) to customize their learnings.

Looking for some recognition of your great work you do for your community media center? Enter the Best of the Northwest Awards!

The Best of the Northwest Awards is a chance for you to showcase exceptional media programs. This prestigious awards contest honors outstanding programs produced by community media/PEG (public, educational, government) access TV and other non-commercial media in the Northwest region (Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming) of the Alliance for Community Media.

For over 20 years, Best of the Northwest has supported programs that are made on a local level. With your entry, you’ll be joining a group of the Northwest’s most successful community and local access producers. Entries will be judged at community media centers outside of the Northwest Region.

Entries are being accepted now through the extended deadline of February 9, 2018. Awards will be presented at the Alliance for Community Media Northwest Regional Conference on April 28, 2018, as part of the ACM – Northwest Region’s conference in Portland, OR (check here for details).

Greetings from Northwest Community Media, an affiliate of the Alliance for Community Media. We are a nonprofit organization working to facilitate connection, knowledge, and resource sharing among community media practitioners in the Alliance for Community Media – Northwest Region, including Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

The local media landscape has changed significantly in the Pacific Northwest. In previous years, we’ve focused primarily on public, educational, and government (PEG) television operations in our work. We’ve realized that the spectrum of community media practitioners is much more broad than our focus. Now we work to forge connections between colleges/universities, activist groups, libraries, digital equity and inclusion efforts, community radio/Low Power FM (LPFM), and community media centers. The mission is to create a more democratically engaged, informed populace by supporting citizen journalism and media literacy.

Providing avenues of continued learning is an important part of our mission. As such, we hope you will consider joining us for the 2018 NW Media Summit: Access the Future. We are excited to bring you a two-day summit on empowering the public and preparing for the next phase of community media in society.

We create meaning through the power of media, and our actions today often lay the groundwork for the standards of tomorrow. As community media practitioners, we play an integral role in a constantly shifting culture. At Access the Future, we will challenge ourselves to build new structures for connecting our communities, improve our repertoire ofmedialiteracy training and tools, acquire helpful tips for strengthening grassroots networking, generate empathy using VR technology, craft accessible content with captioning, and more!

Programming will center around professional development for the next generation of community media leaders, emergent production techniques, better practices for reaching out to marginalized communities, and ideas for working better with youth. We will focus on collaborative efforts between PEG, community media centers, LPFM, public radio, independent filmmakers, and other media creators. Who should attend? Media makers, advocates, students, futurists, librarians, and scholars; natural partners with community media.

Join us for a two-day summit on empowering the public and preparing for the next phase of community media in society. This event alsoincludes a social event on Friday evening and culminates with an awards program on Saturday night – Best of the Northwest – in which exceptional non-commercial programs are celebrated and honored.

Showcase exceptional multimedia productions in community and non-commercial media! This contest honors outstanding independent content produced in our respective service areas. Any content produced and aired in the 2017 calendar year is eligible!

The BOTNW Awards is open for entries now, and open submissions end on February 2, 2018. Submit your content here. Thanks to Castus for being our Presenting Sponsor for the BOTNW Awards!